VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 12, SECTION 2
Twenty Four Hours a Day, in Eight Nets at Once
The last section reckoned only one rope, the mortgage. What this section looks at is this. An ordinary person’s one day, on how many nets does it hang at once. Follow this person from six thirty in the morning to midnight. Walked through, you find that in his twenty four hours, not one is clean.
From the moment the alarm rings
Six thirty in the morning, the alarm rings.
Ask first. This time, who set it.
He set it. But the phone maker and the operating system long ago set the points at which he is to be disturbed, set this whole rhythm. He did not truly decide what hour he is woken.
Seven, he scrolls the phone.
The algorithms of the social platform and the short video long ago trained his response for this time slot. He thinks he is relaxing, in truth he is contributing his attention to the platform.
Eight thirty, into the office.
He must sit in his seat until the day ends. Whether or not there is real work to do today. This is the bind of the contract.
Mark this, already three nets here. He has not yet eaten his lunch.
Carry on down
Noon, he opens the shopping app. Buy now, pay later, is the default option. He taps confirm a few times, and a few months of installments are set up.
Toward evening, off work, on the road he gets the bank’s deduction message. The monthly payment, drawn of itself from the wage account.
Home in the evening, he coaches the child’s homework, arranges the after-school activities, frets over the child’s future.
A little later, he feeds the cat, cleans the litter. The cat is a member of the house, this is a duty past bargaining.
Before sleep, he talks with his spouse. The emotional labor of a marriage, the sharing of the housework, the relations with the in-laws, all to be tended.
Before sleep he scrolls the phone a while more, led along by that carefully designed stream of content, and once more misses the set hour of sleep.
Down to sleep at midnight. Tomorrow it comes again.
Count them, how many in all
This person, in his twenty four hours, is at once in at least eight continuous ceding relations.
The ceding to the employer. The ceding to the bank. The ceding to the shopping platform. The ceding to the child. The ceding to the pet. The ceding to the spouse. The ceding to the algorithm platform. The ceding to the phone maker.
Eight nets. Hanging at once.
But mark this. He will not feel himself enslaved by anyone.
He will feel himself to be. A responsible employee. A grown-up steadily buying a home. A consumer who knows how to enjoy life. A parent who loves the child. A gentle lover of cats. A partner who values family. A modern person who keeps up with the information.
Look these seven titles over.
Every one is real. Every one is worthy of respect.
And under every one of these titles is tied a continuous ceding.
The most important line is this. These cedings, he himself cannot see.
The receiving side is not necessarily a person
Now the deepest layer of this section. Listen slowly.
Look at those eight nets, and see who is tied at the other end.
At the mortgage’s end, the financial system. An abstract thing.
At work’s end, the company. A legal person.
At the child’s end, his own child. A weak one, in theory.
At the cat’s end, a five kilogram cat. It cannot even speak.
At the brand’s end, a trademark. It is not in the physical world at all.
At the algorithm’s end, a stretch of code. It has not even a will.
See this step clear. That position has broken wholly free of the physical base of one person holding another. It has entered a working on the plane of pure symbol.
A cat cannot argue that it is only right it be waited on.
But the person will argue it for the cat. It is so lovable, it needs me.
A stretch of code cannot demand you scroll six hours a day.
But you will find the reason for the code. I am only relaxing a while.
This is the most fundamental difference between the present age and the ancient. It no longer needs any particular holder to appear on the stage.
The one who is ceded will do the whole work of the argument himself.
Look at a five kilogram cat
Walk in close and look at a thing most against the grain, and most amusing.
A five kilogram cat, how does it get a grown person of one meter seven to serve it.
The shoveler cleans the litter morning and evening. The shoveler feeds the appointed brand of food on time. The shoveler carries it to the hospital, and one bill at the cat hospital may be half a month of his wage.
The cat wants to be held, and he must hold it. The cat treads on his face at three in the morning, and he wakes, and he dares not be angry. The cat is displeased, and he examines himself, whether he did something amiss.
Ask, who is master, who is slave.
In law, the cat is his property.
In fact, morning and evening, he bends at the waist, and shovels that cat’s dung.
Set this scene beside the room at the opening of this volume.
That master who could not cook, his life in the cook’s hand.
This shoveler holds the cat’s rations in his hand, and yet his time, his money, his sleep, are held in the cat’s hand.
The one who takes the constraint is the slave. This cat did nothing, it only lay there.
The most empty net of all
Of the eight nets, one is above all to be seen clear.
The algorithm’s net.
A person scrolls short video six hours a day. He says, I am only relaxing.
Reckon this account.
Six hours a day, and the year is two thousand one hundred ninety hours.
Turned into days, that is ninety one days.
Every year he hands a quarter of his life over to a stretch of code.
And gets what back.
Be honest. Very nearly nothing. He cannot recall what he scrolled yesterday. That content stayed on him not at all, became no thing, became no skill, became no relation.
All the cedings before, at least got one thing back. The mortgage got a home. Work got a wage. Raising the child got that child. Keeping the cat got that cat purring at his leg.
This one, got nothing back.
The ceding is real. What came back is very nearly empty.
And he cannot stop. Because the algorithm long ago trained his nerve circuit. To not scroll the phone is to be ill at ease.
Hold this line. This is a success of wei on the layer of biology.
It has been written into the synapses of the one who is ceded.
What this section set up, and the turn to the next
This section set up three things.
The first. Twenty four hours a day, eight nets hanging at once. And the title under each net is real, worthy of respect. The ceding hides exactly under those real titles. He himself cannot see it.
The second. The receiving side is not necessarily a person. It can be a legal person, a trademark, a cat, a stretch of code. By this layer, the holder need not appear at all. The one who is ceded will find the reasons for it himself.
The third. That most empty net. Ninety one days a year, and what comes back is very nearly empty. And he cannot stop, because that lock has been built into his nerves.
Then, read to here, should these nets be cut off one at a time. No marriage, no child, no cat, no house, no work, no phone.
No.
The next section lays down a judgment deeper than every line before. The ceding itself is neither good nor bad. There is one thing only to look at. Is it ceded by you clear-eyed, or do you not even know that you have ceded it.
The next section, the clear-eyed ceding, and the unwitting ceding.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.